India, May 15 -- For more than a century, Indian liberalism has been mocked as little more than mimicry. The British laughed at the ideals preached by "Jabberjees" at the Indian National Congress. Indians were hardly kinder. Radicals from either end of the political spectrum lambasted "moderates" for their "peculiar servility". The jibes have only multiplied since 1947 - "kala sahibs", "Macaulayputras", the "Lutyens" cabal.

The name-calling is hard to resist - if we study only what was said and done in British India where, as Aurobindo put it, "grave citizens" raised on an "English diet" were prone to toasting and petitioning. But there was more to India than this. By focusing on the grievances raised and compromises made by liberals in ...